Daily’s Peppered Bacon

I gave a brief review of Daily’s thick-cut, hardwood smoked peppered bacon after the big Bacon Day Bash, but I decided to give this great bacon some more attention. Naseem, Cameron and I attended a beer festival this weekend, and decided to fill our bellies with greasy goodness prior to imbibing all those brewskies. Since the festival started at noon, a late breakfast seemed like the best idea.

Because this bacon comes in big, thick slices, we decided it would be more efficient to bake them rather than try to fry them in batches. I just don’t have a large enough skillet for that kind of work. We set the oven at 400 degrees, but put the bacon in while the oven was warming so it wouldn’t immediately shrivel up. That was a huge success if you like flat, evenly cooked bacon. And I do. About half way through cooking we poured off some of the grease to fry our eggs and hash browns. Yum, it’s making my hungry just remembering it. It took about 30 minutes to cook the bacon, but obviously would have been quicker if the oven had been pre-heated beforehand.

I loved this bacon. It’s nice and chewy due to the thick cut, and once cooked is more lean meat than fat. There’s a pretty solid layer of pepper on one edge, and since pepper happens to be one of the few bacon flavorings that I find acceptable, it was just perfect for me. The flavor of smoke was not overwhelming, perhaps because pepper is such a strong spice, but that didn’t concern me at all. I gave it an A+, I will definitely buy this bacon again. Cameron was a little less enthused, preferring his bacon maple-sweet, but still seemed to enjoy it. Naseem loves bacon even more than I do…she was too busy eating to give me her insights. I took that as a thumbs-up.

On a side note, we tried Cal Poly Brew Crew’s Smoked Smasher Stout at the beer fest. It definitely had the essence of bacon about it, as well as a chocolatey undertone. I’m a fan of stouts generally, but I don’t think I could stomach too much of this smokey variety. I think I’ll stick to bacon bourbon if I want meat in my drink.